


A Gift

by malafight



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 20:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5430485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malafight/pseuds/malafight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One gem's trash is another gem's treasure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Gift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [airamcg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/airamcg/gifts).



> Honestly I'm not entirely sure what to say here, besides the fact that I really enjoy thinking about what Pearl could have gone through before serving Rose. So uh... here. It's not explicitly PearlRose but it's... meant to be read that way?? Aaah, sorry, I'm a little!! Rushed here!! [flailing]
> 
> The prompt was PearlRose, "She was her favorite."
> 
> airamcg, I hope you enjoy your gift! ;0;

For most of Pearl’s life, she’d been a gift of some kind, but a gift with a sour aftertaste, a gift meant more as a punishment or an insult. After all, what good is a Pearl who never quite _formed_ right?

At first, she’d been considered a rarity- gem slightly warped, giving her frame a sort of ethereal, stretched mien, her physical projection towering over lower, weaker classes of gems. She likes to pretend she doesn’t remember her first master’s name, but it’s burned into the back of her gem, just like every one that followed. The one who’d had her first had kept her on display, standing unmoving and silent for hours and days and sometimes weeks on end, and while those lengths of time are nothing to beings whose lives are measured in millennia, to a newly-formed Pearl, it was _agony_.

She’d been kept on display to flaunt her rarity and height over “lesser” gems, though not lesser to _her_. To her master. But she fidgeted. She twitched, and moved, and sometimes turned, and that is not the sort of behavior becoming a dainty work of art. Statues and dolls and _furniture_ are not meant to _move_.

Punishing an errant Pearl had always been a simple task. Physical harm was discouraged, of course -- no need to risk damaging the artwork -- but it was hardly needed. A Pearl’s base programming demands a need to serve, a need for approval, for validation. Punishing a Pearl could be done with a simple disapproving glance and quiet scorn.

It should have made her more eager to please. Instead, it made her more desperate and anxious. She moved more; she twisted and swayed and rocked. Her body disobeyed- both her own orders, and her master’s. She _wanted_ to be still. She _wanted_ to succeed. She _needed_ that cold, wordless approval. She went weeks without any interaction, saved the thin-lipped glares and top-to-bottom judging assessments from her master and higher-ranking servants.

Then, her first master no longer owned her. She hadn’t been privy to the nature of the changing of hands; she only knew that one day she was fetched down from her polished stone pedestal and led, shaking, into a back room, and given an image.

“Reform like this,” she’d been told.

At least it had been quick.

Her second master was lower in rank, less given to displays of wealth and status. She had, however, needed a personal attendant. Pearl had been better at that, answering her new master’s beck and call and catering to her every whim. Only, she was too _chatty_. Her master wanted a silent companion to be seen and not heard -- not a constant stream of chunnering about the goings-on around her.

When orders to remain silent were consistently disobeyed -- not for lack of trying, of course, she just often found her lips moving without noticing, words spilling from her mouth like a direct, unfiltered line from her mind to her waggling tongue, sometimes accompanied by flickering holograms -- she was put away. No longer a rarity, but now a disgrace to be hidden, she was kept in the dark and silence for weeks, maybe even years, whether for punishment or storage she was never quite certain.

Then, another image. A new body. A new master. A new job to fail.

Her third needed a servant for cleaning and upkeep, and she realized then how well-suited to it she was. She spent hours, and sometimes even days, painstakingly scrubbing walls and floors, washing away dirt and grime and sparkling dust, organizing weapons and trophies and gifts. She’d hum and talk to herself and occasionally even sing, happy to be able to please her master like this, happy to be moving, happy to be _useful_.

“You take too long,” she was told. “You’re too meticulous.”

She let some jobs sit unfinished for too long. Again and again she was told, you need to move faster, you need to get everything done quickly, be more efficient, get more _done,_ but- she just lost track of _time_ , they didn’t understand- the room just wasn’t _clean enough_ for her to leave yet, it had to be _perfect_ -

Her cleaning grew slipshod and rushed, and she grew more agitated and fidgety, things got dropped, got broken, but she was working faster-

Her next master was gentle, and soft, and kind. A low-ranking official of some kind, soft-spoken and warm. Her master gave her jobs one at a time, and only gave her more when she was finished. She cleaned, and she ran errands, and she greeted guests, and she was happier than she’d been in her life.

But her master left on a trip and never returned. She didn’t keep track of exactly how long she cleaned an empty house, stood ready to greet a master that would never walk back through the door, but the days blurred together in an endless loop, and even that monotony was comforting.

When they came to get her, she fought, weak flailing limbs moving desperately to try to _stay_ , wait for a master she knew _wouldn’t leave her_ , but she wasn’t made for fighting, and it only took one blow for her to crumple and retreat.

She reformed somewhere far away. Her new master was not some high-ranking gem, but the overseer of a backwater planet’s Kindergarten, and she was nothing more than a worker. She spent- she was never quite sure _how_ long she spent working there, actually. The work was repetitive, but sometimes dangerous. Newly-formed gems would sometimes be muddled and violent, and she grew quick and capable, using her grace to her advantage to dodge the blundering, half- focused attacks of confused new gems.

She didn’t quite succeed all the time, but it was to be expected. The other gems who shared her duties were rejects like her, defective, formed wrong, unable to perform their proper jobs, only good for the simplest of labor, meant to be disposable and not missed. Failure here was punishment on its own: pain, retreating, sometimes- _worse_ -

The first time she met Rose was during an inspection visit; some high-ranking official had come to see the progress of the Kindergarten and thrown the entire operation off-center. Things were being rushed. Mistakes were made. An Injector hadn’t been anchored properly in the hustle and bustle, and it had fallen, crushed her beneath its weight when she was caught off-guard. She’d retreated to her gem, but when she reformed, it wasn’t quite- _right_. She’d first chalked it up to regenerating too quickly -- she never really liked to rush, but she had a job to return to -- and it wasn’t until she’d caught the horrified look of a fellow worker that she pressed thin fingers to her gem and felt the deep crack running down the middle of it.

And she _panicked_.

She’d been cornered in an older part of the Kindergarten, finally, having fled like a frightened beast, crashing through anything in her way and scrambling frantically around anything that wouldn’t or _couldn’t_ move, and backed against a sheer cliff face, wide-eyed, every photon of her being screaming to fight or flee or _something_ , and it wasn’t until the circle of threatening weapons parted to allow a single beam of light in that she even hesitated, ready to flee again at the slightest hint of danger, and let the imposing gem get close enough to hold her tight to her chest.

For a moment, she’d struggled, until she realized just how futile those attempts were, and then she’d just- accepted her fate, with a sudden rush of hopelessness, and let herself be enveloped.

Then, there was warmth, and the pain and pressure in her head and her gem ebbed away, and she found herself looking up through clearer eyes at the most beautiful creature she’d ever had the pleasure of seeing.

She wasn’t entirely sure how everything happened, not for a good long while. But Rose must have seen _something_ in her, because before she knew it, she was being formally introduced, and _officially_ changing hands again. For the last time, if she or Rose had anything to say on the matter.

Rose Quartz was the first gem who had ever owned Pearl who had given her a choice of how to reform. Rose saw the _defects_ in Pearl, and then went on to act as if they were something special -- something different, and rare, and _good_.

Rose Quartz may not have been Pearl’s first master, but she was her favorite.


End file.
